That's why during his 2008 "I love the market" interview on CNBC, he shunned the "populist" label.
President Franklin Roosevelt showed in the 1930s that major reform is possible if a populist upsurge of ordinary people is mobilized to overcome the entrenched opposition of business interests -- derided by FDR as the "economic royalists."
The problem today is that Obama doesn't seem to have a populist bone in his body. A smart guy, he should know that it's absurd -- in an era when a shrinking number of ever-larger corporations dominate Congress and regulators as they deform markets in industries like banking and healthcare -- to keep believing we have a "free market." Yet he waxes on about being a "free-market guy."
I guess he's smart enough NOT to call himself "a corporate guy."
Liberal activists need to be smart enough to see Obama for the status quo politician he is -- and to act accordingly.
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